Who do you think you are kidding Mr Milliband!

www.propertyfile.co

On Tuesday the 13th of May Mr Miliband, the leader of the labour party, is putting forward a bill in the houses of parliament to shake up the "Private Rented Sector" and to my mind and many others within the market, put us back at least 30 years.

Apparently Mr Miliband and his followers believe the Private rented sector is all part of the "Rip Off Britain" that we hear so much about with letting agents charging enormous and unjustified fees and Landlords capitalising on the circumstances of others! Mr Miliband allegedly believes that it is unfair for a Letting agent to charge a fee to tenant applicants looking to privately rent a property and that the current legislation of an "Assured Shorthold Tenancy" with a minimum term of Six months is unfair and that it should be made mandatory that the minimum term is 3 years to give more security of tenure to the tenants!

Let's start with the letting agents fees. I have been running my own agency for 10 years and we charge a fee to the tenants looking to rent a property from us. These fees are to cover the costs for credit checking and referencing of the applicants for which we pay fees to an outsourced company to do on our behalf as they are firstly very time consuming and secondly it reduces the chance of any errors within the process. The fees also cover the costs of administrating the Assured Shorthold tenancy agreement which is individually tailored to each tenancy, a legal document which must be correct for obvious reasons. The fees also go toward the preparation of an Inventory, advising all utilty companies and council tax of the change of tenant and registering the tenants security deposit with the relevant authority. All this takes effort and time and as the old saying goes "time is money".

Not only is all the above time consuming but most importantly it has to be done correctly, we are talking legal documents, dealing with local government for tax and registering deposits with government organisations. This is a job for professionals with expertise and experience, it is not something that should be taken lightly and as such how can it be seen to be unreasonable by Mr Miliband, his labour party and charitable organisations such as "Shelter" that these services should levy a fee.

As a small business owner I spend my life paying out fees for various services that we require to run our business, fees for admin charges, fees to solicitors to carry out legal work and fees to operate my computer systems. I have to pay rent for my office, phone, heating and electric bills and probably most important of all I have to pay to constantly be up to date with the legal aspects of the lettings industry to ensure I am doing the job correctly for the very tenants Mr Miliband claims to be standing up for.

When Mr Miliband and his cohorts go to the houses of Parliament on Tuesday the 13th of May they will claim a fee for their precious time, over and above thier already high salary, for just being there and representing their party faithful, if they can claim a fee for that purpose is it not reasonable for small business owners like myself to charge a fee for our time and effort which ultimately is ensuring the legal compliance of our work and the security of all parties concerned.

Now let's look at Mr Milibands desire to extend the minimum term to 3 years instead of 6 months as has been the case since the "Assured Shorthold Tenancy" agreement was instigated in 1988 under the housing act.

The benefit of a 6 month agreement is that it creates flexibility for all parties both Landlord and Tenant. Circumstances continually change for everyone, as the say "Life is what happens when your making plans", what if the landlord needs the property back to live in or has financial restraints which means the property needs to be sold, if the term is confined to three years this could create major problems with claiming back possession of the property.

What if the tenant, that moved into the property with all good intentions, can now no longer pay the rent? without the flexibility of an assured shorthold agreement as it stands today the very issues that Mr Miliband believes he will be alleviating will actually get worse.

With the "assured shorthold tenancy" as it is at the moment we already have major issues when it comes to reclaiming possession for the landlord, the eviction process is lengthy, costly and difficult enough as it is without further issues created by making the fixed term longer than necessary. Just as importantly as all the above is the Tenants situation, their circumstances may change too and need to move out before 3 years.

I Feel Mr Milibands ideas are poorly conceived and appear to be just electioneering, he may believe that this is the way forward to secure many votes from the 9 million people in this country that privately rent, a figure which is surely to increase considerably over the next few years, but if he really wants to help people with their housing needs he should be looking at
ways to create more homes in general for the private renters, housing association tenants and home owners alike.

"Your local lettings expert, our advice is free but our knowledge is priceless" 

I have been in and around the Hertfordshire property market for over 25 years, starting as an estate agent in the county town of Hertford and now running a successful lettings and property management company based in Stanstead Abbotts. I have let and managed property all over Hertfordshire from the area that I currently work to Wheathampstead where I owned and managed a lettings & estate agents to Watford and surrounding areas where my company acted as a marketing agent for one of the largest property management companies in the country”





        Adrian Fallart - Director - Property File